


In dark places we dream

by lemonlovely



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Body Snatchers, Crack, F/F, M/M, That's it, based off of the pods in S1, but like in reverse, horror sci fi, mirror!Billy, pod people, that's the story, they were in pods the whole time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23372290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonlovely/pseuds/lemonlovely
Summary: Billy wakes up in a pod in the Upside Down, claws his way free, and finds Heather Holloway in the pod alongside his - where they've remained since being flayed, their perfect body doubles feeding off them in the real world as they dream. Now, they just want to get back home, unsure of what's real and what's not.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley/Heather Holloway
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	In dark places we dream

Billy was cold. He was so, so cold. The kind of cold where it left you sluggish, drowsy, drifting. After moving to Indiana, Billy had never been that familiar with the cold. He’d come from a world of dry heat and summer sun – sure, sometimes the temperature might dip in the winter, but never like it did in Indiana. Never the kind of biting cold that could freeze your fingertips, numb your nose, or make your eyelashes freeze together when you dared to blink. 

But even this? This was a different kind of cold. It had him feeling like some kind of a cold blooded amphibian, left without the light of the sun for too long, his blood turned to sludge in his veins as he struggled to hibernate. Survive. Keep himself going just until he could see the bleeding warmth of the sun one more time. 

Billy was cold. And it occurred to him, slowly, as he came to – that he couldn’t breathe either. There was something in his mouth, up his nose, waterlogging his lungs like syrup as they drew up the thick, viscous fluid like sponges. His brain immediately snapped to attention at that – the inherent instinct to _breathe_ overrunning everything else. He gasped, choking on liquid, squirming, blinded in the dark, with liquid down his throat, taking over everything. 

The space was so dark, and close, with some kind of an otherworldly, electric blue glow coming in hazy through a veil just in front of his eyes – so dim his eyes almost couldn’t process it as they snapped open. Peering through the bespeckled gloom of liquid – not water, something thicker, like he’d been canned, preserved in a glass jar like peaches for winter in nothing but sugar syrup. The world was upside down, turned inside out and see through, and nothing felt real. Not even Billy himself. 

He choked on the liquid, on instinct, on pure instinct, but found he didn’t need the oxygen to breathe. Not really. Like a fetus, still in the womb. Fed oxygen through the embryonic fluid. No need for air, not here. Billy reached forward, blindly. His blind fingers snagged on a smooth sensation, like silk under water. He reached for it again, dragging sensitive fingertips over the sheer fabric – he could see a hint of something on the other side, as he took an almost drugged category of his surroundings. He was curled up, into a fetal position, couldn’t stretch out any farther than that. Still _so cold_. Freezing.

Freezing. And trapped.

The space was small, impossibly so - no closer than his own body, no room to stretch, to stand, to move. Billy had never been claustrophobic – never really been ‘phobic’ anything. Never afraid. But he knew, immediately, that he had to get out of there, with an urgency that he couldn’t have possibly explained that danced closely with panic. The tiny space, pressed close to his skin, offering no room for the rest of the world to exist. He hooked his bare, cold-riddled fingers into claws and tore at he fabric-veil of his bubble of a world. 

And like a bubble, it burst around him.

Dark goo sloughed down around him as he dug his way out, the gossamer thin coating tearing beneath his desperate fingers like wet tissue paper as he clawed his way free. The mess of vapid canning syrup spilled across the ground as Billy half tumbled, half crawled from the confines of his prison, a newborn, reborn back into the world a second revolting time.

But it wasn’t the world he had once known. Or maybe, it was a world he had known – but only once. Only briefly, in bits and flashes of floating, ashen pollen, dark corners and ghost-like shadows flitting at the edges of his vision. Trees that were rotting black and spoiled from the inside out, bark like sludge as vines twisted up them, smothering them. Cracked streets, as if from a thousand earthquakes, and houses that looked as if they’d survived hundreds of years without the care of man. A putrid, dank world that smelled of rotting flesh and overripe, molding fruit. 

He was covered in the ooze, could feel his hair sticking to his forehead, cheeks with it, the back of his neck. He stumbled to the ground, heaving as he hacked up the vile liquid that had filled his lungs, his trachea. Gagging. Vomiting it up onto mold blossomed floorboards that were coming apart at the cracks, where the wood was warped and rotting. Creaking under his weight dangerously, like it might give. 

What the fuck. _What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_ – Billy gave a sudden, intense, violent shiver as he continued coughing until his lungs were at least half cleared, even if the taste remained. Was like he’d been drinking motor oil, dining on shit. Billy wheezed wetly, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, only managing to smear more of the greasy, oil slick liquid. He looked up, and then back at what his prison had been. 

It looked like…he…he didn’t know. He didn’t know what – it was. He didn’t know where he was. Not really, but he knew it was that nightmare world he had been in once. What he had thought was a dream, always dreaming, dreaming, dreaming…impossible things, dark things, damnable things. Things that sent you straight to hell, and back. Maybe that’s what this was. Hell. 

Fear coursed through him like a living thing. Billy had never been afraid, he’d told himself so often enough that he almost believed it – but now he was. He was. 

The thing he’d crawled his way out of looked almost like…like some kind of _egg_. Some big, warped, twisted sort of egg, busted out from the side where Billy’d scrambled through. It looked…like…like a pod, of some sort, an organic pod.

Billy threw up more of the sludge, licking noxious slime from his teeth. Memories haunted the back of his mind, but he couldn’t look at them, not now. His skin was buzzing numb, and he was shaking, violently. It occurred to him in a distant, disconnected sort of way that he wasn’t wearing a shred of clothing. He shuddered and stumbled to his feet, knees so weak he slumped against a wall. A wall – where was he? What wall was this? He looked around in a daze, spots swimming in his vision, cold and alone. Shivering. Books. There were shelves, and books lined them, the spines of them rotten and molding just like everything else in this hellscape. 

He knew this place. Or at least, another version if it, in another life. The library. It was the library. Billy stumbled through the dim and the dark, hardly feeling the sharp bite debris beneath his bare feet. There was another pod. Like his own. 

But unlike his own, which had been broken open, oozing like an open wound in a pool of it’s own innards, dark and desolate without it’s…occupant? This one was different. It was still whole, with some sort of unearthly sort of glow from within the olive skinned shell. And he could see the vague shape of a body within. Curled up, as he had been. The limbs of the being – a person? – twitched slightly, as if with dreams. 

Billy tumbled toward the pod, fingers scrabbling at the tougher outer layer until it gave a soft ‘pop’ and spit out the person inside. 

It was a girl, Billy thought, though it was hard to tell in the nearly non-existent light being cast through the half busted out windows of the library. She had a mop of nearly black, dark hair, and she was covered in dark, embryonic-like goo. She wasn’t moving. Billy felt everything in him go into autopilot, picking up that old life so easily. He dropped to his knees, tried to roll her over, checking for signs of life. 

“Hello?” He wheezed, coughing – liquid still rattling around in his lungs. 

The girl lay there, unrecognizable with the sludge coating her skin, limp and pale beneath the black slime. Billy got her on her back, bare as they day she was born, same as Billy. But he wasn’t looking at that, not at her tits, ass, nothing. Wasn't important, barely registered. He leaned over her instead, ear over her mouth, searching for signs of life – any signs of life, perhaps a sigh of breath, while his fingers pressed to her throat searching for the flutter of a heartbeat. He found one, barely, working away weakly in the soft spot of her jugular. But no breath. No air at all.

The same shit was in her lungs, but she wasn’t awake to spit it up. He rolled her over and gave her a few solid thumps on the back, rolled her over again. Tilted her chin up to straighten and clear her airway, and sealed his mouth over hers. Counted breaths, counted minutes, pulled back, gave it a chance. Tried again.

He muttered wordless prayers in the back of his mind, silently, as she began to cough. Spewing up black rot, spoiled like blood. She coughed and coughed and coughed and he rolled her over to her side so she could puke it up without choking on it. 

But she didn’t wake up. Even when she had to be empty of the shit in her lungs. 

There came a sound, a faint creak from somewhere behind them. Billy flinched, glancing over his shoulder, desperately searching the shadows as he knelt beside her. Holding his breath, straining to listen. A floorboard gave a low groan, as if with shifting weight. In a split second decision, he tried to control his shaking as he got his arms under her, limp on the ground, gathering her up into his arms - all loose limbs and lolling head, like a doll. Icy cold and dripping wet in his arms, holding her close to his chest. 

He had to get them out of here. He didn't know to where - but not here. Not this place of cursed pods that he didn't understand, or want to. Somewhere where he could get them that was safe - or at least, remotely so. The air was beginning to burn in his lungs, making him wheeze more, cough more and he stumbled, muscles flexing as he gathered her close to his chest and got them out of there. 

The world was warped, a backwards mirror of the one he knew. He knew it was Hawkins - some twisted version of Hawkins. He thought again, that maybe this was hell. Maybe it had to be hell. Maybe when he'd crashed his car out by the steelworks, it had been worse than he'd known, or thought and he'd...died. Dragged down to hell with the devils and monsters and beasts. And he was dead down here. With this girl, heartbeat or not. 

And all of those things...all those horrible things, things like memories, like dreams that shifted restlessly in the back of his mind? None of it - none if it could be real. Another life that wasn't his own, even if it had been his hands, his voice, his eyes. That wasn't him. 

Getting out the library, there were more pods...but unlike the girl's, and perhaps unlike his own, they were not lit up from within. They had gone dark. Billy tried to break one open once, but all that sagged out was a broken skeleton, glaring white bones and gaping eye sockets, so unlike the tattoo on his bicep - the dissolving bones all wrapped up in rotting flesh, sinew spilling out like vile noodles. Billy'd thrown up again, this black bile that burned up his esophogous like acid, before he grabbed the girl up again. Left the bones. Kept making their way out of endless stacks, shells of books strewn out over the floor, slowing him down. He saw more of them. Sometimes, the pods were already broken open, empty. He never saw another one lit up, and never dared to try breaking open one that had gone dark. 

Billy didn't know how long he walked, hugging the lines of buildings. There was some sort of an electrical storm not far off, the thunderous cloud bank rolling blood red in the distance. Moving closer to Hawkins all the time. Or at least, what _should_ be Hawkins. 

There was some sort of a creature, a massive, black god there in the clouds that he could just barely make out - a shadow that he knew impossibly well, and yet, didn't know at all. But he knew enough that he couldn't let it see them, catch them. Had to run, had to hide. He was good at hiding - but no, no. That thought hadn't been his own. Had it? He shook his head, trying to clear it. That had felt like another memory that wasn't _his_. 

Billy's arms were beginning to tremble with more than the cold now - but also with the strain of holding the girl - no, the woman, bare in his arms. She still hadn't woken up. He had to focus, had to get them out of here - there was no time to panic, to time for error, or to lose a moment to fear. Never to fear. He was breathing hard by the time he'd made it all the way down this blue-black version of Main Street, creeping with slithering vines and open mouthed flowers. Took longer than it should have, so the shadow wouldn't see. Wouldn't know. Maybe it already knew though, anyways. He heard chitters and crys out there, in the dark. Sounds that raised the hairs on the back of his neck, made his heart rabbit fiercely in his chest. It made him feel hunted - ancient, primal feelings of when the human race had been prey. Telling him to run, telling him to hide. _Hide_. 

But hide where? There was nowhere to go. 

***

Billy didn't know how much time had passed when the girl woke up. By the time she did wake up? He knew who she was. He'd tried to wipe more of the shit and gunk off of her face - and something in him had twisted up tight when he realized who it was. 

Heather fuckin' Holloway. 

The memories-that-weren't-his-own reared up ugly and black, reminding him of just how he knew Heather Holloway. What he had done to her. There were the thoughts, the memories, of the ones he knew to be real, to be true - working at the pool together, joking around together in the break room, and that one time that they fucked and then never talked about it again. She'd been giving him eyes for weeks, and he'd been curious if he'd just had a thing for lifeguards when he'd admired 'em out at Mission Beach out in Cali. Was his first chance to fuck a lifeguard. He guessed that hadn't been it, though. He hadn't wanted to think, at the time, about what that meant it really was. 

Not just some sorta kink. Something worse. 

But they hadn't talked about it, and Billy'd never planned to. 

And now? Now, Billy had a sense...Billy had a sense it was his fault she was here, somehow. All of the memories were there at the ends of his fingertips, just waiting for him to stir them up and show themselves. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. But he'd known how she screamed. He knew how she looked when she cried, pleaded, begged. He knew how she looked stuffed in the trunk of his Camaro, the look of shocked betrayal in those big, brown eyes. How had he done those things? How could he do those things?

Now, those pretty eyes snapped open. She gave a low cough - she'd _been_ coughing, even in her sleep, so it wasn't so new. But now she was looking at him as her slight little frame rattled with the awful, wrenching coughs. Billy stirred, head lifting a bit from where he'd been half curled up against the kitchen wall in Steve Harrington's big fancy fuckin' house. As if he belonged. Didn't know why he went here in the first place. He guessed if he thought about it, he knew Harrington's was one of the richest places in town. Might have food, might have clothes, might have coats or blankets or...anything. Water. Something. He'd been there for a house party once, what felt a lifetime ago.

"Hey - you doin' alright?" He asked, still wheezing, squinting at her.

He couldn’t help the relief that flared sure and bright in his chest that she’d woken up at all. He’d been afraid she might not. He didn’t want to be alone here, on his own with his thoughts – with those terrible thoughts. 

"B-Billy?" Heather hacked up the name, shivering and trembling beneath the ratty old wool blanket he'd drawn up over her. He had his own around his shoulders - pulled from a coat closet towards the back of the hallway upstairs. The pale wool blankets seemed to be the only fabric that wouldn't dissolve at the slightest touch. Clothing had been pretty much out of the question, crumbling beneath his frustrated hands.

"Yeah, y-yeah. 's me." Billy mumbled. He didn't know how much he looked like himself - hell, Heather barely looked like herself. A little waif of a thing, and hardly even that anymore. 

They were both still dirty, skin smudged over as if with ink, and his hair hung in a knotted, snarled mess around his ears, golden curls now lank and stained in black. It'd been perfect once, had been important to him, but he couldn't bring himself to care anymore.

"Wh..what..what's...happening. Where are...we..what?" She was gazing around dizzily, fingers fumbling numbly at the blanket he'd covered her in. He could see the moment it began to set in - all of it. 

Her eyes went round as chocolate coins, dark voids in her face as he chest picked up with the rise of her rapid breath, heart surely kicking up too. She was looking around in confusion now, head swinging about like it wasn't connected to her neck right, mouth ajar like it'd gone unhinged.

"Whu - wha?" 

"Dunno. I - shit, I dunno, man. Alright? I just...found you. I dunno." Billy said, his voice sounding like a garbage disposal. He shivered. He was so cold. 

Heather got hysterical real quick, he thought. He didn't blame her. Couldn't blame her. He didn't know why he hadn't freaked out yet, neither - he figured he'd just been so focused on getting them out of there, getting them safe. Maybe having her to focus on? That had helped. 

"What the - I mean - " She was staggering up to her feet now, blanket half slipping, and she gasped as she realized it, glancing down. She clutched at the grimy, grey wool blanket, holding it up 'round her tits like he hadn't seen it before. "Why am I - ?" She stared at him like he was some sorta _rapist_ or some shit. 

"Woah, hey - no man, alright? Heather, you - shit, I - I don't KNOW alright? This ain't my fault!" He didn't think. Maybe it was. "We woke up this way, alright? Buck ass naked. We were...I mean..." How could he explain the pods? He couldn't. "This place is fucked, alright? I don't...I don't know. We were like this." He put his hands out, trying to soothe her, but it was hard when he couldn't even do that for himself. He just didn't need her shrieking in his ear. 

"You expect me to BELIEVE THAT BILLY HAR-" 

"Keep it down!" Billy hissed at her in alarm, glancing over her shoulder and around the corner of the kitchen he'd tucked them away in. The kitchen was huge - would probably be fancy if they weren't in Hell, or whatever this was. Had a kitchen isle and everything, and granite countertops. Billy pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. 

Heather's mouth hung open, really seeming to come to now. Staring around. Registering everything. How things were...not right. Wrong, in every sense of the word. She shut up.

"I think...think we might be in Hell." Billy said slowly, voice dropped to a whisper. "What all you remember?"

She swallowed, swaying on the spot, and then slowly sank back down to the cracked, yellowing linoleum. She was still breathing fast, close to hyperentilating, her eyes flicking around in a panic to the shadows around them.

"I um..." She swallowed thickly, lifting a hand to wipe some remaining pond sludge from her cheek. She went silent, went still, her eyes still seeming to process something Billy couldn't see. Tear bright and wandering. She was quiet for a long time, and Billy let her think. "I don't....know, either." She finally said. "I remember...I mean...it's like a dream. Like a nightmare. I remember...awful things. _Awful things._ " Her eyes grew wider still, and her lower lip gave a sudden tremble, chin wobbling. She suddenly turned that dark gaze upon Billy, as if for answers he didn't have.

Jesus Christ. Please don't _cry_. If there was one thing Billy couldn't handle? It was bitches crying. 

"Did you do this to me?" She asked, voice wavering, thick with tears. 

" _No._ " Billy said, giving a short, aborted shake of his head, even as guilt twisted his insides like thorned vines. "No. I - fuck, no. I - ." But he remembered it. Sitting in the shower, after being burned. The way she'd leaned down before him, telling him to bring her to him. And then the scene shifted, warped. She asked if she should call an ambulance. He locked his jaw, grit his teeth at the thought, screwed his eyes up tight. "It wasn't me. It wasn't. At least I...I don't know."

Heather's shoulders sagged in thought as she looked away, holding the blanket around her frail shoulders. Her soft brown curls now hung in black chunks around her ears as her gaze drited around listlessly over the floor. 

"No...no, it wasn't? Was it? Just like it...like it wasn't me. With my parents. That couldn't have been me, could it? I wouldn't have - Billy, I never would have done that!"

Billy swallowed, gave a hoarse cough. His throat felt tight too. "Never would've, neither. Not t'you, or...anybody. Not to....not to my dad, or..." 

But he had, at least...that version of him? Had. At least he thought so. Her eyes widened impossibly more at the mention of his own dad, too. Jesus, Billy could't even bear to think about it. 

"Woke up in this...this thing." His throat ached, burning with the words, like he'd been swallowing razorblades. His lungs fucking hurt, too. Hurt like a bitch, like everything else. "This...egg? This...pod. I know it sounds crazy, alright? Don't gotta look at me like that. Full of this...liquid? Fuck, I don't know. I broke out. Found you in one too, and broke yours. There were some other ones, but uh..." He looked away uneasily, bright blue eyes shifting amidst the dark mess of his face like impossible jewels. The same way his teeth flashed bright white against the dirt. "Nobody was in them."

He couldn't bring himself to tell her about the....the bone bright skeletons, dissolving in their prisons gone dark. 

"It is crazy. That is crazy! This is impossible. This - this has to be a nightmare. It can't be real!"

"It's fuckin' real, alright? I already told you, I - we might be...dead? In hell. I don't fucking know, alright? You see this place? You think I got answers?"

"These memories - they can't be mine!"

"And you think mine can be?!" Billy whisper hissed at her. "I told you to keep it down! There're - these - _things_."

"What things?"

"Could only hear 'em. Somethin' bad, though." He'd never heard sounds like that - not from any animal. "Demons, maybe. You think anything else could explain...this place? That - that fuckin' beast made of human _meat_?"

Heather seemed to go paler still, even though she'd been paper white under the muck before. "You really think we could be in Hell?" She asked, voice wavering. "My daddy said - hell was only for bad people!"

"Well...maybe we really did all those bad things." Billy's face formed a mask at the thought. What other explantion was there? 

Heather burst into tears. And Billy didn't know what to say.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what this is; just for fun, something that's been on my mind. It's based off of the pods we see in the Upside Down in S1, with sort of a reverse concept for the Pod People from Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1978. Mirror!Billy from the start of S3 stayed in the real world, and the real Billy never left the Upside Down. If you read it, hope you like it!


End file.
